The environment, or one's surroundings, provides an ideal vantage point through which to engage in an experiential learning process that can lead to improvements in the environment and one's quality of life. It is particularly suitable in a Buddhist context given Buddhism's ecological outlook among the world's belief systems. Buddhism is not a "religion" in the western sense, but a way of life that perceives all life, including so-called inanimate objects, as interconnected and interrelated. Physical reality, as quantum physics has again reminded us, is a seamless web of relationships, not the purview of a subject-object or fact-value separation. An ecological understanding of the environment is best seen, or experienced, in terms of a "humans-nature-culture matrix," as Sri Lankan Buddhist scholar Padmasiri de Silva pointed out at a regional seminar, "Toward an Environmental Ethic in Southeast Asia," organized in November 1997 by the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh. The seminar brought together religious scholars - mainly Buddhist, but also Muslim, and indigenous people's representatives - and environmentalists. The Buddhist Institute agreed to establish an Environmental Ethics in Southeast Asia Project (EESEAP) as a follow-up to the seminar. In 1998, EESEAP produced the proceedings of the seminar, "Toward an Environmental Ethic in Southeast Asia". Its sale at $25 ppd. provided initial funding for EESEAP. KEAP (P.O. Box 657, Crestone CO 81131/USA) is its distributor outside Asia. A complimentary copy of the proceedings is provided to anyone who donates $100 or more to any of the environmental activities and projects listed below.

Under the honorary patronage of the Most Venerable Samdech Maha Ghosananda, KEAP's honorary founding patron, a dozen Cambodian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) led by Ven. Nhem Kim Teng, Cambodia's "ecology monk," are endeavoring to help save Cambodia's environment through the network of Buddhist temples in the country. Initial technical and financial assistance to produce training materials for this project was provided through the United Nations Development Programme's Environmental Technical Advisory Programme (ETAP), whose environmental education unit was coordinated by KEAP's founder and executive director, Peter Gyallay-Pap. The UNDP program closed as scheduled at the end 1998 and the actual training and follow-up/application phases of the project are still awaiting implementation. Anticipated follow-up support from governmental donors did not materialize due in the aftermath of the 1997 political and military unrest that ousted Cambodia's elected First Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Rannaridh. Your support can ensure that this program can continue and thereby have a long-term positive impact on Cambodia's environment and quality of life. The purpose of the program is to train hundreds of monks in core district and sub-district (commune) temples to mobilize the people to learn about, protect, and improve their local environments while also putting moral pressure on the country's leaders to stop the plunder of Cambodia's resources.

      The first, or materials development phase of the project was completed in early 1999 by the NGO working group with assistance from the Buddhist Institute's EESEAP (see above) and technical and financial assistance from ETAP. Produced were a color-illustrated community learning tool, A Cry from the Forest, targeted at the local populations served by the temple; a smaller, supplementary text for all the monks and nuns affiliated with a wat; and learning tapes, which includes a Khmer-dubbed video of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture. The next phase in the project, for which funding is desperately needed lest this program lose momentum, is training the headmonks and/or deputy headmonks of core temples at district-level workshops. These four-day residential workshops are conducted by the monk master trainers with technical backstopping from the local NGOs participating in the consortium. The cost for organizing and conducting a residential (5-6 nights) workshop for some 30 participants, representing 15 core temples, is approximately $1,500 - or $100 per temple. The expected outcome of the workshops are monks and in some cases also nuns equipped with and able to use training materials and to lead learning-and-doing activities to protect and enhance the local environment served by the temples. This self-help participatory process through the temples will also help strengthen civil society structures in the country; promote the healing, reconciliation, and renewal process; and provide hope for a more sustainable future.

      Sponsor a life-supporting environmental education workshop through a local Cambodian NGO. Click the How I Can Help page

There are more than 300 Pali, or primary, schools enrolling moe than 10,000 monks in Cambodia. In early 1999, a team from the Education Department of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, with technical/financial assistance from UNDP's Environmental Technical Advisory Programme (ETAP) and assistance from the Buddhist Institute, completed a draft manual on environmental education for the teachers in these schools. The ten Buddhist-oriented modules in the manual are designed to be integrated into existing subjects in the monk school curriculum. With the closure of the UNDP/ ETAP environmental education program in December 1998, the draft manual faced revision before conducting six planned regional workshops to introduce the manual to (and receive comments from) the teachers. After the workshops, the manual would be field-tested in the classroom for a school term before the final revision of the manual. Your contribution can help complete this work, which complements and reinforces the completed non-formal education materials.